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The question of relevance comes before that of truth, because to ask whether a statement is true or false presupposes that it is relevant (so that to try to assert the truth or falsity of an irrelevant statement is a form of confusion).

David Bohm

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David Bohm
Age: 74 †
Born: 1917
Born: December 20
Died: 1992
Died: October 27
Nuclear Physicist
Philosopher
Physicist
University Teacher
Wilkes-Barre
Pennsylvania
David Joseph Bohm
Asks
Confusing
Whether
Irrelevant
Comes
Statement
Science
Relevant
Irrelevance
True
Statements
Falsity
Form
Confusion
Presupposes
Truth
False
Relevance
Trying
Question
Assert

More quotes by David Bohm

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We have the idea that after we have been thinking something, it just evaporates. But thinking doesn't disappear. It goes somehow into the brain and leaves something-a trace-which becomes thought. And thought then acts automatically.
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Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.
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Yet, in spite of this world-wide system of linkages, there is, at this very moment, a general feeling that communication is breaking down everywhere, on an unparalleled scale.
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A new kind of mind thus beings to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue.
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Ego-centeredness is not individuality at all.
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So one begins to wonder what is going to happen to the human race. Technology keeps on advancing with greater and greater power, either for good or for destruction.
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...consciousness is a coherent whole, which is never static or complete, but which is in an unending process of movement and unfoldment.
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But the way people commonly use the word nowadays it means something all of whose parts are mutually interdependent - not only for their mutual action, but for their meaning and for their existence.
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The notion of a separate organism is clearly an abstraction, as is also its boundary. Underlying all this is unbroken wholeness even though our civilization has developed in such a way as to strongly emphasize the separation into parts.
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The ability to perceive or think differently is more important than the knowledge gained.
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Similarly, thought is a system. That system not only includes thought and feelings, but it includes the state of the body it includes the whole of society - as thought is passing back and forth between people in a process by which thought evolved from ancient times.
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From the outset, however, this whole controversy has been plagued by tacit assumptions, very often of a philosophical rather than a physical character.
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One thus sees that a new kind of theory is needed which drops these basic commitments and at most recovers some essential features of the older theories as abstract forms derived from a deeper reality in which what prevails in unbroken wholeness.
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From the point of view of the species, death is part of this whole process. You could say that species have evolved in such a way that individual members last a certain time. Perhaps a certain kind of species would be better able to survive if the individuals didn't last too long. Other kinds could last longer.
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Thus, in a dialogue each person does not attempt to make common certain ideas or items of information that are already known to him. Rather, it can be said that collectively they are making something in common
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Then there is the further question of what is the relationship of thinking to reality. As careful attention shows, thought itself is in an actual process of movement.
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A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department... they don't have any meaning separately they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.
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We could say that practically all the problems of the human race are due to the fact that thought is not proprioceptive.
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In relativity, movement is continuous, causally determinate and well defined, while in quantum mechanics it is discontinuous, not causally determinate and not well defined.
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The system [of thought] doesn't stay with the difficult problem that produces unpleasant feelings. It's conditioned somehow to move as fast as it can toward more pleasant feelings, without actually facing the thing that's making the unpleasant feeling.
David Bohm